Barbizon
School: A group of
French artists who devoted themselves to 'plein-air' painting after 1840, and is
seen as having invented it.

Baroque:
A style, which expresses sensual enjoyment with colossal bodies. Stylistic epoch
of European art between ca.1600 and ca.1750. Characteristic extreme dynamism,
play with space and light situations.

Baroque
Classicism: Trend
with in the art of the Baroque which, in contrast to the florid formal language
of the Baroque, is influenced by the art of the Antique.

Base
A platform on which a sculpture is exhibited, or the portion of a sculpture on
which its weight rests.

Bauhaus:
School of building and design founded in Germany in 1919.

Batik:
A technique for cloth dyes entirely graphic in character, originating in Java,
where subsequent knots are tied on silk cloth and dipped in dyes. It is a
process of resist dyeing and only one color can be used at a time, and when
there are several colors everything which is to remain in the first color has to
be treated with "resist" in the subsequent dips, while those exposed
to the next must be protected afterwards from later colors.

Bhairava:
Bhairava is the frightful, the terrible and the horrible aspect of Shiva.
Shiva is one of the three major gods of the Indian pantheon.

Bhakti:
Devotion. In Indian thinking there are three ways to attain Salvation. One of
the paths is through ‘bhakti’ the other two being Karma (Action) and Jnana
(knowledge).
The Bhakti Movement in India gave the country profound religious Saints,
poets,and philosophers like Ramanuja and Chaitanya. The Movement also produced
great devotional lyrical poetry and hymns in all major languages in North, East
and South India.

Bhayankara:
Terrifying. The emotion of fear.

Bibhatsa
rasa (beebhatsa)—In
Indian poetics this rasa imparts to the viewer or audience the emotive content
of disgust.

Biedermeier:
German stylistic trend between 1815 and 1848. Characteristic motifs are
bourgeois idylls.

Bird's
Eye View: The
horizon is at an unusually high eye level.

Blaue
Reiter,Der: Title
of an almanac containing art-theoretical essays, published by W.Kandinsky and
F.MARC in 1910.

Blending
Brush: A flat
brush of two to four inches width.

Bodhisattva:
‘Bodhi’ – enlightenment; ‘Sattva’
– essence or substance.
They are Buddha-like saints. They are full of compassion for their fellow
beings. They refrain from entering the state of Nirvana or salvation. They
minister to the needs of others. They are worshiped as saints and are depicted
in Buddhist sites in India and abroad.

Brahma:
The Creator. He is among the three major gods of the Indian pantheon, along with
Shiva and Vishnu.

Brahmana:
Hindu Sacred Texts. In the Vedic text Brahmana is the part that deals with
prayer and ritual.

Brahmanical:
Refers to the religion that is based on the Vedas.

Brahmins:
The priestly class in the Brahmanical religion. They are the bearers of all
religious learning.In the hoary past one had to achieve distinction in learning
the language, the Vedas, philosophy and priestly duties. Only then could one
become a Brahmin. Later the status became hereditary. Cf. caste
and varna.

BRÜKE,DIE:
Expressionist artists' community (1905-1913).

Brush:
A device used to apply paints and inks to a surface, consisting of
hairs/bristles held in place and attached to a handle.

Brushwork:
The qualities of a personal handwriting, for example in an artist's application
of paint.

Brush
cleaner:
A compound used to clean oil, acrylic etc from brushes.

Buddha:
(563-483
BC)—‘Enlightened One’. One of the greatest persons ever born. His name was
Siddhartha Gautama. He was a prince born in a small kingdom at the foothills of
the Himalayas, Kapilavastu, in modern Nepal. His active ministry was, however,
in East and North India. He left his palace in search of Truth. He went through
the rigours of a variety of religious experiences. He is said to have finally
understood the nature of Truth and attained Nirvana
(enlightenment). He preached and won converts to his fold. He lived and
worked during the second half of the sixth century BC. He was a profound
thinker, one of the few who have deeply influenced the world.

Buddhism:
The first of the International religions. It believed in preaching and
conversion. Buddha was an agnostic. The religious teaching of Buddhism is built
around the ethics of compassion and restraint. It teaches to avoid extremes and
excesses, and follow the middle way (Noble Eightfold Path). It was basically an
ethical, ascetic and monastic religion. Buddhism paved the way for the flowering
of Indian art and every aspect of culture, particularly sculpture.

Butcher's
tray:
A white enameled tray used as a palette for water colour or acrylic paints.

Camera
Obscura: A pinhole
camera, which was used from the 17th century as an aid to studies of
perspectival constructions, portraits and proportions.

Canvas:
A coarse cloth used for painting.

Caput
Mortuum: Very
unclear colors of deep red brown and violet brown lacking in intensity. It is a
synthetic compound of manganese.

Caravaggisti:
Artists influenced by Caravaggio's painting.

Caricature:
A witty drawing illustrating a literary joke, social or political satire or
advertisement. It arises from the portrait of a definite individual, portrayed
as a person and not as a general type. Its pictorial presentation depends on two
things; firstly, the most precise pinpointing of the characteristic forms of the
face, and secondly their exaggeration. It is basically an impression of the
artist's psychological experience of the person.

Carpenter's
Glue: A type of
reversible glue.

Cartoon:
A humorous or satirical drawing or sequence of drawings.

Casein:
A type of non-reversible glue derived from sour skim milk.

Cast:
The technique of shaping a form in a mould by either pouring liquid plaster or
molten metal. The plaster gradually dries within the mould. The metal hardens as
it cools. After some time the mould is opened. Out comes the sculptural form
like a chick from the shell of an egg.

Caste:
A system of social stratification. It has Varna
as its prototype. It is an endogamous and hereditary social grouping. Persons of
the same caste have the same social rank, similar occupation and economic
position. In this system too, the Brahmins remain at the top. But the Kshatriyas
(Warriors), Vaishyas (Merchants) and Shudras (Commoners) are all mixed up in the
myriads of castes. Each caste is given a Varna status.

Casting:
There are several methods of Metal Casting like lost wax casting and
sand-casting. A sculptor creates the form generally in clay. From this he takes
waste moulds (The moulds have the negative impression of the form on the
inside).

Chaitya:
Stupas having the characters of a sacred monument. Chaitya halls are shrines in
which the votive chaityas occupy the place of an altar.

Chakra:
Wheel or discus. In Buddhist iconography the ‘chakra’ symbolizes the first
Sermon of the Buddha. In Vaishnava iconography it is the discus that Krishna
holds in his upper right hand.

Champaka
A beautiful flower of the Champaka tree, Michelia
champaka. This motif is used for decorating the temple walls.

Charcoal
Charred wood used for drawing.

Cherry
Gum: It is
extracted from the cherry laurel. It was used in earlier centuries as a glue for
cherry gum tempera.

Chiaroscura:
Technique used since the 16th century in which color is less
important than a strong contrast of light and dark.

Chola:
A South Indian dynasty and Kingdom. One of the three great kingdoms of Tamil
tradition. They ruled in the southern part of the peninsula, especially the
Coromandel Coast. Rajaraja Chola I (985-1014 AD) and Rajendra Chola I (1014-1042
AD) were two great kings. They sent naval expeditions to Ceylon and S. E. Asia.
Due to material prosperity, Fine Arts flourished.

Cinquecento:
Italian term for the 16th century.

Classical
Modernism: Art
historical term to describe the beginnings of abstract art, beginning with
Cezanne.

Cloisonnism:
A style recalling the lead boundaries used to isolate areas of color in
stained-glass windows, developed at the end of the 19th century by E.
Bernard and P.Gaugin.

Color-Field
Painting: A
different trend in abstract expressionism.

Complementary
Colors: The colors
on the color circle or color triangle which produce white if mixed additively,
and black if mixed subtractively.

Complementary
Contrast: A Color
contrast in which complementary colors are played off against one another.

Crayon:
Traditionally, any drawing material, made in stick form, including chalk,
crayon, charcoal. Usually stick or pencil of coloured wax.

Criyical
Realism: German
art movement in the 1960s, which showed contemporary themes, painted in a
realistic manner.

Cubism:
Movement formed by P. Picasso and G. Braque (during 1907)in which objects are no
longer reproduced according to their vis8al impression; everything figurative is
broken down into geometrical shapes.

Cobo-Futurism:
Russian artistic movement in the early years of the 20th century, in
which Cubist and Futurist influences were combined.

Dadaism:
Art movement begun during the First World War, which rebelled against
traditional art values with deliberate nonsense and new expressive forms, called
anti-art.

Danube
School: A loose
group of artists in the German territories along the Danube at the beginning of
the 16th century.

Decalcomanie:
A method developed by the Surrealist M. Ernst, wherein damp paint is transferred
from one support (paper, glass) to paper by being rubbed by hand.

Deepa:
Lamp.

Devotional
Painting:
Paintings designed for quiet contemplation and personal devotion.

Dharma:
It has come to mean religion. Essentially it means righteousness. It can also
mean characteristics of any and everything. According to the Gita ‘dharma’
is the assignment given to each Varna. The Brahmin’s or the priest’s dharma
is to minister to laity. The dharma of Kshatriya (Warrior) is to fight for his
country and its citizens. The dharma of the Vaishyas is to carry on all economic
activity. This includes trade and commerce. The Shudra is the working class in
the Varna system. In other words everyone has to work within the folds of the
Varna system. The suggestion is, one man’s meat is another man’s poison.

Dikpala:
Guardians of cardinal points in an Indian temple or shrine. They are carved in
stone. In common parlance a dikpala
is a great man.

Divisionism:
A method of dissecting color and light, used in late Impressionism.

Drip
Painting: A
painting technique in which the paint is dripped in uncontrolled gestures on a
canvas laid out on the floor.

Durva:
A type of soft and
slightly aromatic green grass.

Durvadala:
A tuft of such
grass.

Dutika:
A woman who is a messenger between lovers.

Dwarapala: Guardian figures made of stone at the gateway (dwara)
of the temple.